A Journal of Public Opinion & Political Strategy
T H E D E M O C R AT I C
strategıst
M I L I TA R Y
S T R AT E G Y F O R
D E M O C R AT S
B y James Vega
PART I
Understanding the
“pro-military, but antiBush’s war” voters
M I L I TA RY S T R AT E G Y
w w w. t h e d e m o c r a t i c s t r a t e g i s t . o rg
FOR
D E M O C R AT S –
How the Democrats Can Argue with McCain and the Republicans
about Military Strategy and Win
James Vega is a strategic marketing consultant whose clients include major nonprofit
o rganizations and high-tech firms
PART II
Iraq is not a “classic
counterinsurgency”; it’s
a full-blown civil war
PA RT I - UNDERSTANDING THE “PRO-MILITA RY, BUT ANTI-BUSH’S
WAR” VOTERS
PART III
Because of the number and variety of questions they ask on a single topic, the surveys
The surge isn’t
“working”, it’s just
“postponing” – and in
the long run
it’s making
things worse
produced by Democracy Corps provide Democrats with data of unique value. They
make it possible to begin to visualize some of the larger political perspectives into
PART IV
The Republicans do
have a military strategy
– it’s called
“Divide and Rule”,
it takes at least
50 years, requires
lots of casualties
and – the half-hearted
way we’re doing it –
almost never works
PART V
How the Democrats
Can Argue with
McCain and the
Republicans about
Military Strategy
and Win
which voters specific opinions are organized.
The recent D-Corps survey and analysis of opinion on National Security, for example,
makes it possible to get a feel for the size of two broad groups – the firmly partisan
anti-war Democratic “base” voters and the firmly partisan pro-Bush, pro-military”
Republican “base” voters.
On the one hand, about 27% of the respondents in the D-Corps survey agreed with
every one of the following five statements
F i rmly Partisan Anti-War Democrats
•
The Democrats will do a better job “insuring a strong military”
•
The Democrats, more than Republicans “respect the military”
•
The surge was “a mistake”
•
In Iraq, America should “reduce the number of troops”
•
Bush’s policies have “undermined America’s security”
On the other hand, about 45% of the respondents agreed with all five of the
following statements
F i rmly Partisan Pro - B u s h ’s Wa r, Pro - M i l i t a ry Republicans
2
•
The Republicans will do a better job of “insuring a strong military”
•
The Republicans, more than the Democrats, “Respect the military”
•
The surge is helping to “win the war”
•
America must “Stay the course”, “finish the job” and “achieve stability”
•
Bush’s policies have “increased America’s security”
The most important fact that emerges from this comparison is the very substantial number
of respondents – about 30% – who do not fall in either category. They agreed with some of
the five statements but not others.
But what do these “inconsistent” voters actually think? Among the respondents to the
D-Corps survey as a whole, the main distinction was between responses to the first two
questions and the final three.
On the one hand, only about 27% of all respondents to the D-Corps survey thought the
Democrats would be better at “insuring a strong military” or “respecting the military”.
About 55% thought the Republicans would be better.
In contrast, about 54% of all respondents agreed that “the surge was a mistake”, that “we
should reduce the number of troops” and that “Bush’s policies have reduced America’s
security”. Only about 44% thought we should “stay the course”, that “the surge” was
working” and that Bush’s policies have “increased America’s security.”
In short, while a majority of Americans think Republicans are more favorable to the military,
many are also strongly opposed to Bush’s policies. It is this significant “pro-military, but antiBush’s war” group that is the critical swing vote on national security.
As the authors of the D-Corps analysis note:
The imperative for Democrats is to repair the trust deficit the electorate has
regarding Democrats when it comes to their use of the military instrument…
It is important to understand the nature of this challenge clearly. It is partly
about the willingness to use force… But the other part of the problem, the
new survey suggests, is simply about Democrats’ familiarity and affinity with
the military.
One source of the problem lies in the estrangement between liberal-progressives and the
military, an estrangement that became deeply rooted during the Vietnam War. As William J.
Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Air Force who has taught at the Air Force Academy
and Naval Postgraduate School has noted:
…the traditional liberal/progressive critique often begins by citing the
insidious influence of Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex,” throwing in
for good measure terms like “atrocity,” “imperialist,” “reactionary,” and
similar pejoratives. But what’s interesting here is that this is often where their
critique also ends. The military and its influence are considered so tainted, so
baneful that within progressive circles there’s a collective wringing of hands,
even a reflexive turning of backs, as if our military were truly from Mars…
This is deeply entwined with the issue of social class. As Astore continues:
3
Our military remains deeply rooted in the broad middle-and working-class elements of society. Our Ivy League schools, our white-shoe law firms, Boston’s
Beacon Hill, New York’s Upper West Side have little presence in it. Yet everywhere you go in blue-collar, small-town and rural America, you bump into
o rd i n a ry people who know someone in the military: a nephew, a cousin, a
close buddy from high school, even, these days, the girl next door.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174889/william_astore_in_the_military_we_trust
There is a simple social indicator that suggests the profound depth of this divide. Few
liberals and progressives can name any of their close friends or co-workers who have a
framed photograph of an earnest-looking young man or woman in a uniform proudly
displayed in their living rooms. Among working class and other ordinary Americans, on the
other hand, it would be very difficult to find any who do not have a friend or neighbor who
has or has had such a picture on their wall.
The most basic and deep-seated attitudes of ordinary Americans toward the military are
generally rooted in a complex and idiosyncratic mixture of personal experiences. For some
the military was their path to an education or the first steps in adult life. For others, their
attitudes were shaped by a father, brother, family member or close friend who served in the
military and perhaps even lost his life in a war.
The way to cut through this cognitive Gordian knot is to recognize that people’s attitudes
toward the military can be seen as composed of two distinct subcomponents – a value system
and a conceptual framework. To understand them, the key is to consider them separately.
Most Americans are familiar with the positive aspects of the military value system. It includes
patriotism, self-discipline, bravery, technical mastery, cool-headedness and a commitment to
something larger than money. Many anti-war Democrats may perceive the flag waving ads
for Marines that are shown in the movie theaters and on TV as corny and manipulative,
but for their intended working class audience the values and outlook they express are
profoundly real and inspiring.
But the military value system goes deeper. As one sociological analysis noted:
…working people also feel an additional psychic bond with the men and
women in the armed forces because the soldiers uphold very deeply held and
distinctly working-class values: ruggedness and bravery, teamwork and group
solidarity, loyalty, heroism and self-sacrifice. In the rest of American culture
these virtues are given a much lower value than intellectual ability, ambition,
competitiveness and the achievement of material success. For high-schooleducated young men and women who are often not “successful” in these
latter terms, the armed forces provide them with the opportunity to be seen
as role models and heroes to their families, friends and communities.
4
When working-class Americans refer to “our boys in uniform,” they are
e x p ressing an intensely felt emotional truth as well as a metaphorical one –
that the soldiers and other personnel – men and women – are not only
literally their children but are also the re p resentatives of some of the best
values of their culture.
http://www. p ro s p e c t . o rg / c s / a rticles?article=class_and_warfare
Liberals and progressives are, of course, also acutely aware of negative aspects of the
military value system – enforced conformity, rigid obedience and the glorification of
violence – characteristics dramatically portrayed in films like Stanley Kubrick’ s “Full Metal
Jacket” and “A Few Good Men”. But, even among firm liberals and progressives, there is a
recognition that these characteristics are to a very significant degree unavoidable aspects of
any military organization, no matter how purely defensive or altruistic its purpose.
Along with a distinct value system, however, the military world also has a distinct
conceptual framework – one which is deeply internalized by its participants, but which many
liberals and progressives simply do not understand.
At the level of the individual soldier or non-commissioned officer, the most important
element of the military perspective is the mission. Higher level officers are taught a more
abstract conceptual hierarchy of National Strategy, Military Strategy, Operational Strategy
and Tactics, but for most military personnel, there are essentially only two main concepts –
the mission and the strategy to accomplish it.
For the vast majority of the men and women serving in the military, since 9/11 their
overarching vision of the basic mission in which they are engaged is prevent another
terrorist attack on America. No other national goal (e.g. protecting America’s access to
Mideast oil, remaking the cultures of the Arab-Persian world) remotely approaches the
centrality of this basic mission in their minds. It is this mission, and no other, that inspires
young 18 and 19 year olds to enlist in the armed services in the first place and to continue to
serve without objection, to make huge personal sacrifices and to endure.
There is virtually no disagreement with this mission among most Americans. It is as close to a
national consensus as there is on any subject.
In regard to the military strategy to achieve this goal, on the other hand, there is a vast
amount of disagreement, not only among all Americans but within the ranks of the military
as well. Various polls of both military personnel and of higher and lower level officers show
that the initial consensus that existed in 2001 has now been replaced by widespread sense of
disillusionment and strong dissent.
What this suggests for Democratic strategy is self-evident. To win the support of the millions
of Americans who consider themselves “pro-military” but disagree with the Bush/Petraeus
strategy there are three distinct sub-tasks that must be achieved.
5
1. Democrats must demonstrate to “pro-military” voters that they sincerely
honor and respect the value system of the American military.
2. Democrats must distinguish and clarify to these voters that they completely support what most members of the armed forces see as their basic
mission – protecting America from another terrorist attack. They must
make clear that this is emphatically not the issue on which Democrats and
Republicans disagree.
3. Democrats must make clear that the real argument between Republicans and
Democrats lies in the realm of military strategy – that the Republican military
strategy is fundamentally flawed and that the Democrats have a better one.
To effectively make this case to the millions of “pro-military” voters, Democrats will have to
learn how to do something that is unfamiliar for them. They will have to learn how to express
their ideas in the language and framework of military strategy – to win the debate within
the “strategic” conceptual framework in which “pro-military” voters want policies regarding
Iraq to be discussed.
This is not as difficult as it may first appear. Generals like Wesley Clark do it routinely. The
following four sections show how it can be done.
6
A Journal of Public Opinion & Political Strategy
T H E D E M O C R AT I C
strategıst
M I L I TA R Y
S T R AT E G Y F O R
D E M O C R AT S
M I L I TA RY S T R AT E G Y
w w w. t h e d e m o c r a t i c s t r a t e g i s t . o rg
FOR
D E M O C R AT S –
B y James Vega
PART I
Understanding the
“pro-military, but antiBush’s war” voters
PART II
Iraq is not a “classic
counterinsurgency”; it’s
a full-blown civil war
PA RT II - IRAQ IS NOT A “CLASSIC COUNTERINSURGENCY”; IT’S A
FULL-BLOWN CIVIL WA R
On the November 27, 2007 Charlie Rose Show, John McCain said of Iraq:
“This is a classic counterinsurgency we are engaged in right now. This is not a new strategy. General Petraeus has updated it, but the fact is it’s a classic counterinsurg e n c y.”
Political journalists and observers paid little attention to this particular remark, seeing
PART III
The surge isn’t
“working”, it’s just
“postponing” – and in
the long run
it’s making
things worse
PART IV
The Republicans do
have a military strategy
– it’s called
“Divide and Rule”,
it takes at least
50 years, requires
lots of casualties
and – the half-hearted
way we’re doing it –
almost never works
PART V
How the Democrats
Can Argue with
McCain and the
Republicans about
Military Strategy
and Win
it as a vague generalization. People familiar with military matters, on the other hand,
knew McCain was referring to something very specific – military publication FM -3-24 –
“The US Army-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual”.
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-24.pdf
This publication, written by General Petraeus along with Lt. General James Amos and
Lt. Colonel John Nagl, was widely described as revolutionary when it appeared in
December 2006. It was rapidly downloaded over 1.5 million times from the internet
and generated more commentary than any other modern military publication. Most
frequently, it was cited as the basis for Petraeus’ new strategy behind the “surge”.
FM -3-24 is a statement of military doctrine. It presents a “common language and
common understanding of how army forces conduct operations” and in two important
respects it does indeed represent a radical departure from the past.
First, the Counterinsurgency Field Manual represents a very dramatic break with the
“Powell Doctrine” that emerged out of the disillusionment with the war in Vietnam.
The Powell Doctrine held among its directives that, for the use of regular Army and
Marine forces (1) there must be a clearly defined mission, (2) that force, when used,
should be overwhelming and disproportionate to the force used by the enemy and
(3) that there must be a clear exit strategy from the conflict in which the military
is engaged.
The application of the “Powell Doctrine” was clearly evident in the conduct of the first
Gulf War and commanded wide approval among U.S. military commanders at the time.
From this perspective, anti-guerrilla campaigns were perceived as a very distinct kind of
military operation that could best be handled by Special Forces and other highly
specialized and uniquely trained troops.
The new Counterinsurgency Field Manual, in very stark contrast, defines anti-guerrilla
warfare as a central task for the regular Army and Marines. The bibliography of FM-324 specifically cites books dealing with the strategy of post-World War II anti-guerrilla
7
campaigns in Malaya, Kenya, Algeria and Indochina as the principle models upon which the
new strategy is based.
Along with this radical change in doctrine, the manual also takes a very strong position on a
major military debate left over from the Vietnam War – a debate between the advocates of
using virtually unrestricted firepower and military force – symbolized by terms like “carpet
bombing” and “free-fire zones” and the advocates of an alternative approach identified
with the slogans of “Winning Hearts and Minds” and “Vietnamization”.
FM -3-24 very aggressively and systematically champions the second approach. It defines
counterinsurgency operations as nothing less than “armed social work” and bluntly asserts
that such campaigns cannot win unless they succeed in protecting the civilian population and
rebuilding the economy. More specifically it lists four major objectives (1) Security from
intimidation, coercion, violence and crime; (2) Provision of basic economic needs, (3) Provision
of essential services such as water, electricity, sanitation and medical care; (4) Sustainment of
key social and cultural institutions
Just within the category of “essential services”, the detailed list of the objectives needed for
success is startling –
•
criminals detained
•
timely response to property fires
•
water treatments plants functioning
•
electrical plants open
•
power lines intact
•
all schools open, staffed, supplied
•
roadways and bridges open
•
hospitals and clinics open and staffed
•
trash collected regularly
•
sewage system operating
There are similarly detailed lists for security, governance and economic development.
The manual energetically argues that nothing less than extensive “armed social work” of this
kind can defeat an insurgency. As it dramatically states:
“The decisive battle is for the people’s minds…lasting victory comes from a vibrant economy,
political participation and restored hope.”
But, who and what are the insurgents who must be defeated? In presenting its answer, the
manual frequently tends to suggest the mental image of a basically peaceful village or urban
area beset by a cadre of subversives infiltrating from outside. One of the most prominent
charts in the book, for example, asserts the following:
8
“In any situation, whatever the cause, there will be –
I.
An active minority for the cause
II. A neutral or passive majority
III. An active minority against the cause”
Moreover, FM-3-24 asserts, all insurgencies tend to be similar. “All insurgencies” it states,
“adhere to elements of a recognizable revolutionary campaign plan” and “Most insurgencies
follow a similar course of development. The tactics used to defeat them are likewise similar
in most cases”.
The manual describes five basic varieties of insurgency, each with its most characteristic example.
•
Conspiratorial (e.g. Lenin and the Bolsheviks)
•
Military focused (e.g. Che Guevara and rural guerrilla bands)
•
Urban (e.g. the IRA)
•
Protracted Popular War (e.g. Mao Tse Tung, Ho Chi Minh)
•
Identity focused (by religious affiliation, clan, tribe or ethnic group)
The manual notes that the last category is in many respects more accurately classed as a
demographic variant of or a subcategory within the fourth variety of Maoist Protracted
Popular War.
This typology very strongly reinforces the image of “insurgents” as a subversive minority
infiltrating a passive population. The image is powerfully reinforced by a dramatic table that
lists the specific tactics these “insurgents” employ:
“Ambushes, Assassination, Arson, Bombing and High Explosives, Chemical, Biological,
Radiological or Nuclear weapons, Demonstrations, Denial and Deception, Hijacking and
Skyjacking, Hoaxes, Hostage Taking, Indirect fire, Infiltration and Subversion, Kidnapping,
Propaganda, Raids or Attacks on Facilities, Sabotage, Seizures.”
This quite vividly underlines the image of insurgents as a fringe group of violent subversives
who victimize innocent people. With only one or two exceptions, in fact, the list above makes
the conceptual category “insurgents” indistinguishable from that of “terrorists.”
This leads to medical analogies that identify insurgents with disease.
“With good intelligence, counterinsurgents are like surgeons cutting out cancerous tissue
while keeping other organs intact”
“Counterinsurgency operations generally progress through three indistinct stages that can be
envisioned with a medical analogy – (1) stop the bleeding, (2) inpatient care – recovery
(3) outpatient care – movement to self-sufficiency.”
This describes the insurgents, but who or what is the government that they oppose and that
the U.S. counterinsurgents support? FM-3-24 offers a wide variety of labels
9
•
“constituted government”
•
“established government”
•
“established government, occupying power or other political authority”
•
“an existing authority (which) may be an established government or an interim
governing body”
•
“an emerging government”
This list quite noticeably avoids the use of the terms “legitimate” or “popular” to describe
the governments the insurgents are challenging. In fact, FM -3 -24 quite clearly assumes that
in many cases they will not be.
US forces committed to a counterinsurgency effort are there to assist a HN
(Host Nation) government. The long-term goal is to leave a government able
to stand by itself
(The U.S. role is) helping friendly forces reestablish political order and
legitimacy where these conditions may no longer exist”
“Victory is achieved when the populace consents to the government’s
legitimacy and stops actively and passively supporting the insurgency
Democratic liberals and progressives will find these quotes troubling on both moral and
political grounds. The final quote above, in fact, has the disturbing implication that, in order
to achieve “victory”, a “populace” that is “supporting the insurgency” can or should be
compelled by American military power to “consent to the government’s legitimacy”.
The line between propping up an unpopular dictatorship and defending a popular or
legitimate government gets entirely lost in this linguistic fog. It gives the U.S. military and
political leadership a moral and political “blank check” to designate any force they choose
as the “existing authority” or HN (host nation) – which must be defended by American
t roops – and to label any other forces they choose as “insurgents” – who must be cru s h e d
by American forces.
This aspect of FM –3-24 will be most strongly objected to by the liberal and progressive wing
of the Democratic Party. But an even wider sector of the electorate will find it even more
disturbing that – simply as a matter of fundamental military strategy – the simplistic “host
nation vs. insurgents” framework of FM –3-24 simply does not work in the case of Iraq.
There are indeed some foreign volunteer fighters – from Western Europe, Iran and other
Moslem countries – in Iraq but they remain a very small percentage of the combatants. The
vast majority of the “insurgents” are native-born Iraqis who are not affiliated with either al
Qaeda or Iran.
Yet the extraordinary fact is that the Counterinsurgency Field Manual simply defines the
crucial concept of “civil war” entirely out of existence. In the series of formal definitions in
10
FM-3-24 the term “civil war” is never defined. It simply does not exist.
This is, to put it bluntly, absurd. Most Americans see on the news that there is now a bitter
struggle going on between three sectarian/ethnic groups in Iraq: (1) the Sunni resistance,
(2) the ISRI/Badr militia group (which underlies the Dawa political party of the Prime Minister
Nuri al-Maliki and (3) the followers of Moqtada al Sadr’s Madhi Army.
Each one of these three sectarian/ethnic groups has substantial armed militias under its
command and each one of these militias has been extensively documented engaging in acts
of kidnapping, extortion, murder, criminal activity and intimidation. At the present time the
United States is paying weekly salaries to 90,000 members of the first group, supporting the
second as the “established” government of Iraq and (until recently) officially praising and
honoring a cease-fire with the third.
This reality simply does not fit FM -3-24’s model of a small, subversive movement of
“insurgents” duping or terrorizing a passive or hostile population. On the contrary, for
most Americans, it is nothing more than an act of common sense to face the fact that for
several years now events in Iraq have reflected the ebb and flow of a violent ethnic and
religious civil war.
Advocates of the current strategy, however, go to the most extreme lengths to avoid or
obscure this reality. For example, in his congressional testimony on April 8th, General Petraeus
carefully avoided using the term “civil war” to describe the “fundamental nature” of the
conflict. Instead he used different words that defined precisely the same thing:
“In September I described the fundamental nature of the conflict in Iraq as a competition
among ethnic and sectarian communities for power and resources.”
Later in his testimony, when asked about the militias of Moqtada al Sadr he replied carefully that they were “a movement that has to be not just acknowledged but addressed,
acknowledged, reached out to by the government of Iraq.” Elsewhere, he said they must be
“to some degree, accommodated.”
Yet at the same time, however, he defined the “enemy” – the forces fomenting the violent
ethnic conflict in Iraq by saying: “...Various elements push Iraq’s ethno-sectarian competition
toward violence. Terrorists, insurgents, militia extremists and criminal gangs pose
significant threats.”
Yet these are precisely the terms widely used to define the Sadrist militias who Petraeus at
the same time argued, must be “acknowledged” and “accommodated”. In fact, in the two
weeks surrounding Petraeus’ testimony, the Sadrist militias in Basra were described as all of
the following:
“Renegade militias”, “criminal gangs”, “criminals and gang leaders”,”outlaw militiamen”,
“Shia gangs and terrorists”, “thugs”, “extremist militias”,“terrorist groups”, “criminals and
militia extremists", “Terrorists, insurgents, militia extremists and criminal gangs", “Bad
actors”, “hard core extremists.”
11
In short, the Sadrist militias were – at exactly the same time and by exactly the same people
– being described as a major social force in Iraq that had to be recognized and as a
destructive fringe group of insurgents who needed to be crushed.
There is, in fact, a fevered and overwrought, almost desperate quality in the lurid language
quoted above – an attempt to keep fitting one of the three contending religious and ethnic
groups in Iraq’s civil war into the simplistic “Good Guys vs. Bad Guys” language of FM –3-24
and thereby dismiss them as fringe elements by the force of sheer vituperation.
But it simply will not work. No successful military strategy can possibly be formulated if its
authors cannot even maintain a consistent definition of the enemy that it is designed to
defeat. This is a matter of common sense that all Americans - either with or without military
experience – can quickly understand. The conflict in Iraq is either basically a civil war among
major population groups – which then requires one very particular and distinct kind of
military strategy on the part of US forces - or it is an insurgency conducted by a small,
unrepresentative and subversive fringe – which requires a quite different strategy.
Ironically, FM –3-24 presents a quote from the famous military strategist Von Clausewitz that
seems almost directly addressed to this issue. In his book, On War, Von Clausewitz states:
The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish …the kind of war on which
they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature. This is the first of all strategic questions and
the most comprehensive.
12
A Journal of Public Opinion & Political Strategy
T H E D E M O C R AT I C
strategıst
M I L I TA R Y
S T R AT E G Y F O R
D E M O C R AT S
M I L I TA RY S T R AT E G Y
w w w. t h e d e m o c r a t i c s t r a t e g i s t . o rg
FOR
D E M O C R AT S –
B y James Vega
PART I
Understanding the
“pro-military, but antiBush’s war” voters
PART II
Iraq is not a “classic
counterinsurgency”; it’s
a full-blown civil war
PA RT III – THE SURGE ISN’T “WORKING”, IT’S JUST “POSTPONING” –
AND IN THE LONG RUN IT’S MAKING THINGS WORSE
During his opening remarks at the recent Senate hearings on Iraq, John McCain
described the situation as follows:
At the beginning of last year …full scale civil war seemed almost
unavoidable… (But) since the middle of last year sectarian and ethnic
PART III
The surge isn’t
“working”, it’s just
“postponing” – and in
the long run
it’s making
things worse
PART IV
The Republicans do
have a military strategy
– it’s called
“Divide and Rule”,
it takes at least
50 years, requires
lots of casualties
and – the half-hearted
way we’re doing it –
almost never works
PART V
How the Democrats
Can Argue with
McCain and the
Republicans about
Military Strategy
and Win
violence, civilian deaths and deaths of coalition forces have all fallen
dramatically. This improved security environment has led to a new
opportunity, one in which average Iraqis can in the future approach a
more normal political and economic life.
…Today it is possible to talk with real hope and optimism about the
future of Iraq and the outcome of our efforts there…we’re no longer
staring into the abyss of defeat and we can now look ahead to the
genuine prospect …of success.
McCain’s optimism was somewhat dampened by the fighting in Basra and Sadr City that
was occurring even as he spoke, but most of the discussion of Iraq during the Senate
hearings indeed accepted the basic proposition that the generally falling level of
violence during the preceding months did represent undeniable proof of “progress” or
“success”. Up until the week before McCain’s testimony, most journalistic reports about
Iraq quite optimistically described formerly empty streets now filled with pedestrians
and markets and stores that had been closed and shuttered now open and filled with
customers. On the surface, it certainly seemed plausible to assume that if the relative
calm could be maintained, Iraq could steadily advance toward stability.
This corresponds with the average person’s conception of civil or urban warfare – that
if the streets of an area can be made safe, the local population will rapidly come to
support the authorities and reject the forces seeking to create violence. For this reason,
the citizens of western nations almost always approve of temporary cease-fires to
stop violence.
Many military historians and strategists, however, disagree most strongly with this view.
There is, in fact, a very substantial body of opinion which holds that temporary cease
fires in civil wars very often do not permanently reduce violence, but simply postpone
the fighting and can even make it worse when it recurs.
13
One of the leading contemporary military theorists, Edward N. Luttwak, Senior Fellow of the
Center for Strategic and International Studies, is a prominent advocate of this perspective.
In his influential book, “Strategy – The Logic of War and Peace” he notes that many civil
wars are “low intensity” conflicts that do not automatically escalate to major set-piece
battles. Rather, they proceed for long periods of time with a low, constant level of violence
punctuated with occasional flare-ups and clashes.
As he says:
…in civil wars the intensity of the fighting is often low, the scale small with
violence localized within a wider environment that the fighting might affect
only marginally if at all…civil wars can therefore last for decades. No intense,
large scale war can last for many years, let alone decades and some have
burned themselves out in weeks or even days.
…But if war is interrupted before its self-destruction is achieved, no peace
need ensue at all. So it was in Europe’s past when wars were still fought intermittently during spring and summer campaigning seasons, each time coming
to an end with the arrival of winter – only to resume afresh in the spring…
Luttwak then proceeds to argue his main point, using the Balkans as one example:
Since 1945 wars among lesser powers have rarely been allowed to follow
their natural course. Instead they have typically been interrupted long before
they could burn out the energies of war to establish the preconditions of
peace …cease fires merely relieve war-induced exhaustion, favoring the
reconstitution and re a rming of the belligere n t s , thus intensifying and
prolonging the fighting once the cease-fire comes to an end.
…Dozens of UN imposed cease-fires interrupted the fighting between Serbs
and Croats in the Krajina borderlands, between the forces of the SerbMontenegrin federation and the Croat army and among the Serbs, Croats and
Muslims of Bosnia. Each time the belligerents exploited the pause to recruit,
train and equip additional forces for further combat. Indeed it was under the
protection of successive cease fires that both the Croats and the Bosnian
Muslims were able to build up their own armed forces to confront the wellarmed Serbs. …the overall effect was to greatly prolong the war and widen
the scope of its killings, atrocities, and destructions.
Luttwak applies the same logic to longer-term armistices:
Unless directly followed by successful peace negotiations, (long-term )
armistices perpetuate the state of war indefinitely because they shield the
14
weaker side from the consequences of refusing the concessions needed for
peace. Fearing no further defeats or territorial losses behind the indirect
protection of the great powers that guarantee the armistice, the losing side
can deny peace to the winning side, and even attack its lands in deniable
ways by infiltrating raiders and guerrillas. Armistices in themselves are not
way stations to peace but rather frozen wars.
Luttwak’s analysis, which is shared by many other military historians, has profound
implications for how the success of the surge should be measured. Simply counting monthly
casualties or noting the return of cheerful Iraqis to the local marketplace is not an adequate
measurement. If the underlying sources of civil conflict remain, the period of cease-fire may
simply provide the opportunity for the combatants to rearm and resupply for renewed – and
possibly more violent and widespread – conflict later on.
For example, Bobby Ghosh, Time Magazine’s former Bureau Chief in Iraq, concluded a April
14th update on the situation as follows:
…the murderous rage I saw in 2006 and 2007 continues to fester. The Mahdi
army may have ceased fire, and the Sunni insurgents may pose as friends of
America, but both are just waiting. Unless Americans have a major change of
heart about maintaining a substantial and aggressive military presence in
Iraq, all the gains of the past year will amount to nothing.
This analysis of cease-fires is widely shared by many of the “realist” critics of the
Administration and has been incorporated into their analyses.
For example, As Zbigniew Brzezinski argued in the Washington Post:
C o n t r a ry to Republican claims that our depart u re will mean calamity, a
sensibly conducted disengagement will actually make Iraq more stable
over the long term. The impasse in Shiite-Sunni relations is in large part
the sour byproduct of the destructive U.S. occupation, which breeds Iraq
depen-dency even as it shatters Iraqi society. In this context, so highly
reminiscent of the British colonial era, the longer we stay in Iraq, the less
incentive various contending groups will have to compromise and the more
reason simply to sit back.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/27/AR2008032702405.html
General William Odom, former director NSA, argued similarly in testimony to the Senate:
The surge is prolonging instability, not creating conditions for unity.
…“Violence has been temporarily reduced but today there is credible
15
evidence that the political situation is far more fragmented.
Let us consider the implications of the proliferating deals with the Sunni
strongmen. They are far from unified among themselves. Some remain
with al Qaeda. Many who break and join our forces are beholden to no one.
Thus the decline in violence reflects a dispersion of power to dozens of local
strongmen who distrust the government and occasionally fight among
themselves. Thus the basic military situation is far worse because of the
proliferation of armed groups under local military chiefs.
This can hardly be called greater military stability much less progress toward
political consolidation, and to call it fragility that needs more time to become
success is to ignore its implications. …What we are witnessing is more
accurately described as the road to the Balkanization of Iraq, that is, political
fragmentation. We are being asked by the president to believe that this
shift… is the road to political centralization. He describes the process as building the state from the bottom up.
I challenge you to …name a single historical case where power has been
successfully aggregated from local strongmen to a central government except
through bloody violence …It took England 800 years to subdue clan rule on
what is now the English-Scottish border and it is the source of violence in
Bosnia and Kosovo …it has placed the United States astride several civil wars
and it allows all sides to consolidate, rearm and refill their financial coffers at
US expense.
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/32419
Finally, Steven Simon, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and past member
of the NSA argued as follows in a recent, much discussed article in Foreign Affairs:
(The surge) is not linked to any sustainable plan for building a viable Iraqi
state. If anything, it has made such an outcome less likely, by stoking the
revanchist fantasies of Sunni Arab tribes and pitting them against the central
government and against one another. In other words, the recent short term
gains
have
come at
the expense
of
the long-term
goal
of
a
stable, unitary Iraq.
The surge may have brought transitory success …but it has done so by
stoking the three forces that have traditionally threatened the stability of
Middle Eastern states: tribalism, warlordism and sectarianism. States that
have failed to control these forces have ultimately become ungovernable and
16
this is the fate for which the surge is preparing Iraq. A strategy intended to
reduce casualties in the short run will ineluctably weaken the prospects for
Iraq’s cohesion over the long run.
h t t p : / / w w w. f o re i g n a ff a i r s . o rg / 2 0 0 8 0 5 0 1 f a e s s a y 8 7 3 0 5 / s t e v e n - s i m o n / t h e - p r i c e - o f - t h e surge.html
In principle, it would be possible for advocates of the current policy to argue that Iraq is a
typical of most civil wars and that, for some specific reason, in this particular case a
temporary reduction in violence will rapidly lead to sustained reconciliation between the
country’s ethnic and religious blocs. But no serious argument along these lines has been
offered by any major military historian sympathetic to the administration’s views. Instead, the
temporary reduction in violence over the last 9 months has been invariably presented as
presumably self-evident proof that the surge is a success.
Yet average Americans, both those with military experience and those without, can see that
the evolution of Iraq over the last five years offers far more evidence for the view that
temporary reductions in violence simply postpone conflict rather than that they end it.
Of course, this time might turn out to be totally different, but, without a plausible
rationale for why it might happen, such a hope is an exercise in wishful thinking rather
than military strategy.
But what do the architects of the administration’s military strategy actually think? Every
senior commander in the American military has read Luttwak’s book and is aware of its
contents. What is their response?
In fact, the major architects of the “surge” do not base their strategy on the hope that
temporary cease-fires will lead directly to sectarian and ethnic reconciliation. They actually
have a quite different strategic vision – one with deep roots in military history.
17
A Journal of Public Opinion & Political Strategy
T H E D E M O C R AT I C
strategıst
M I L I TA R Y
S T R AT E G Y F O R
D E M O C R AT S
M I L I TA RY S T R AT E G Y
w w w. t h e d e m o c r a t i c s t r a t e g i s t . o rg
FOR
D E M O C R AT S –
B y James Vega
PART I
Understanding the
“pro-military, but antiBush’s war” voters
PART II
Iraq is not a “classic
counterinsurgency”; it’s
a full-blown civil war
PART III
The surge isn’t
“working”, it’s just
“postponing” – and in
the long run
it’s making
things worse
PA RT IV – THE REPUBLICANS DO HAVE A MILITA RY STRATEGY – IT’S
CALLED “DIVIDE AND RULE”, IT TAKES AT LEAST 50 YEARS, REQUIRES
LOTS OF CASUALTIES AND – THE HALF-HEARTED WAY WE’RE DOING
IT – ALMOST NEVER WORKS.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was not the first time in history that a western army won
decisive military victories in the Middle East and then found itself bogged down in a
tenacious guerrilla war. As the military historian Archer Jones noted in his book, “The
Art of War in the Western World”, the same fate befell Alexander the Great 2,500 years
earlier. After winning decisive victories against the Persian army in two major battles,
he found himself unable to defeat the tribes of northern Afghanistan:
(Alexander’s) opponents essentially followed a raiding strategy,
attacking his outposts and, except for their strong points avoiding con-
PART IV
The Republicans do
have a military strategy
– it’s called
“Divide and Rule”,
it takes at least
50 years, requires
lots of casualties
and – the half-hearted
way we’re doing it –
almost never works
tact with large contingents of his army …they sought to avoid strong
Macedonian forces, concentrating on overwhelming weak detachments
and then withdrawing.
(Alexander) established and garrisoned a large number of fortified
military posts throughout the settled part of the county …although the
measures taken by the Macedonians strengthened the defense …they
PART V
How the Democrats
Can Argue with
McCain and the
Republicans about
Military Strategy
and Win
failed to prevent the guerrillas raids. The invaders had too few soldiers
to stop the raids in a large country in which the guerrillas had political
support among the population.
Alexander was the first of the great conquero r-generals of western history. But the
classic description of how a war of occupation should be conducted – one that was
read by every British schoolboy learning his Latin in the era of the British Empire and
by every modern graduate of West Point – is Julius Caesar’s narrative of his conquest
of Gaul. Caesar’s dispatches to the Roman senate about his campaigns in what is now
France, Belgium and Germany provided a model that all subsequent generals sought
to emulate.
Western Europe in Caesar’s time was a vast patchwork of small tribes, each controlling
areas of one hundred or two hundred square miles, along with some 20 or 30 much
larger cultural groups. Caesar, in contrast, had only a handful of legions under his command. But the Roman legion was a formidable fighting force that could routinely
defeat Gallic armies two, three or four times its size. It was a highly trained and disciplined formation of about 5,000 men that could fight as a single cohesive unit, stand-
18
ing literally shoulder to shoulder, or it could quickly divide into smaller groups that
could maneuver and battle independently. A Roman legion could march all day at a pace
almost twice as fast as most of its opponents and then build a walled, fortified camp before
the sun had set. Roman military technology was far in advance of Gallic techniques and
included the ability to build river spanning bridges, catapult artillery, siege towers and vast
encircling walls around resisting Gallic cities within a matter of days.
But with only four legions when he began, Caesar could not hope to control the vast region
f rom the Italian Alps to the English Channel by sheer military force alone. The key to his
strategy was a complex network of alliances with some Gallic tribes and the deliberate
fomenting of conflict between others – a method the Romans called divide et impera –
divide and ru l e .
As the leading military monograph on Caesar’s Gallic campaign notes:
(Caesar’s) task was made easier by the inability of the Gallic tribes to unite to
form a combined resistance to the invaders. Indeed some tribes supported the
Romans, and the Romans played one tribe off against another, exploiting
the territorial ambitions of different Gallic tribes and even political divisions
within tribes.
Caesar (who frequently referred to himself in the third person in his dispatches) described
one such maneuver as follows:
He (Caesar) impressed upon Diviciacus the Aeduan the importance, alike for
Rome and the general safety of Gaul, of preventing the junction of the
various enemy contingents, in order to avoid the necessity of fighting such
powerful forces at once. He explained that the best way of effecting this was
for the Aedui to invade the land of the Bellovaci and start devastating it.
In fact, reading Caesar’s dispatches is almost like looking over the shoulder of a skilled chess
player as he moves his pieces – legions, garrisons and allies – across a map of Western Europe,
placing garrisons at strategic locations, rapidly moving troops to quell outbreaks of rebellion
and negotiating a careful network of alliances and “treaties of friendship” with tribal
leaders. Caesar’s readers in the Roman senate were engrossed by his descriptions of how he
maintained control over such a vast territory with his relatively small force.
Three features of Caesar’s Gallic campaign stand out as key characteristics that reappear in
later empire-building military campaigns.
First is the remarkable sense of utter self-righteousness and superiority with which Caesar
conducted his campaigns. Caesar was actually quite sympathetic to the motivations of the
tribes who opposed him, noting at one point that “all men naturally love freedom and
hate servitude” and that “tribes which were considered the bravest and most warlike in the
world naturally felt bitter resentment at the complete loss of this reputation which
submission to Roman rule entailed”. But he sees it as so completely self-evident that Rome
19
should dominate the Gallic peoples that it does not require discussion. He takes great care to
present himself as a reliable ally and merciful conqueror, but there is no question in his mind
that the Gallic peoples must ultimately be forced to submit to Roman control.
The second notable feature of Caesar’s campaign is his complete and routine acceptance of
systematic brutality and massive reprisals. Regarding one tribe, Caesar notes:
He (Caesar) resolved to make an example of them in order to teach the
natives to be more careful in future about respecting the rights of
ambassadors; he had all their councilors executed and the rest of the
population sold as slaves.
And another:
Every village and every building they saw was set on fire; all over the country
the cattle were either slaughtered or driven off as booty; and the crops, a part
of which had already been laid flat by the autumnal rains were consumed by
the great numbers of horses and men. It seemed certain therefore that even
if some the inhabitants had escaped for the moment by hiding, they must die
of starvation.
The starvation of civilian populations was, in fact, a standard method of Roman imperial warfare, as was the selling of entire defeated populations as slaves. Although Caesar at times
expresses regret that the rebelliousness of the Gauls obliges him to commit these acts, there
is no question in his mind that they are a natural and necessary part of maintaining order.
The final characteristic of Caesar’s Gallic campaign that reappears in later conquests is the
calm acceptance of the idea that in wars of this kind, an actual state of “peace” can never
really be achieved. All a conqueror realistically seeks is to limit the warfare to a perpetual
series of low-level rebellions that must be constantly combated. In the Gallic case, battles
between Romans and Gauls had been occurring for over a century before Caesar arrived on
the scene and it was not until well into the reign of the first Emperor Augustus that Gaul was
considered pacified. Even then, periodic rebellions still occurred for another century.
After the decline of Rome, the next great colonial empire created by the strategy of divide
et impera was the conquest of the New World. The conqueror of Mexico, Hernan Cortez,
even more then Caesar, exploited the skillful use of the strategy to seize control of the
country with only a literal handful of conquistadors. Although his victory is frequently
credited to his European weapons – a small number of muskets and cannon – the most
detailed modern account of his politico-military strategy – Mexican historian Jaime Montell
Garcia’s La Conquista De Mexico-Tenochtitlan – makes it abundantly clear that it was the
skillful series of alliances he negotiated with the other indigenous cultures subjugated by
the Aztecs that were of greater importance. The vast majority of the fighting during the
conquista, in fact, actually occurred between diff e rent native cultures with the
conquistadores playing only a relatively minor military role.
20
Divide and Rule played a similarly important role in the creation of the British Empire,
particularly in India, which was a vast mosaic of languages, religions, ethnicities and cultures.
One particularly vivid expression of the British approach was expressed by an artillery officer
who said “I seek to have a different and rival spirit in my different regiments so the Sikh
might fire into Hindoo, and the Goorkha into either, without any scruple in case of need.”
In two respects these later empires followed the Caesarian pattern. First, both the Spanish
and British had a similarly firm belief in the utter righteousness of their cause – the former
saw themselves as saving the Aztecs from the flames of hell, the latter as saving the Indians
from the darkness of ignorance and superstition. Second, both colonial powers were fully
willing to use systematic brutality and massive reprisals to enforce their rule. Names like “The
Black Hole of Calcutta” and visual images like the illustrations of the methods of torture used
against rebellious Indians in Fray Diego De Landa’s Condicion de Los Indios de la Nueva
Espana have come down to the present day as reminders of what were considered “normal”
and “acceptable” methods for suppressing native rebellion.
But in another respect the Spanish empire in the new world and the British Empire in India
departed dramatically from the Caesarian model. Unlike Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, both
Spain and Britain did indeed fundamentally transform the indigenous cultures of the
countries they conquered, imposing West European culture on top of the native economic,
political and social systems. By the 20th century to most people it seemed entirely “normal”
or “natural” that Mexicans should speak Spanish rather than Nahuatl or Indians English
rather than Hindi.
Yet, it is important to recognize that this transformation was extremely long and vastly
complex. The Spanish and British colonial administrations directly controlled the two nations’
school systems, legal systems (courts, prisons), civil service and major economic institutions.
And yet it took at least 50 and more like 100 years for a major sociocultural transformation
to occur.
On reflection, it is clear why this would necessarily be so. In sociological and anthropological
terms fundamental cultural change is best understood as a process that occurs not over a
period of years or decades but over generations. For the first 20 or 30 years after a conquest,
there are still many people who remember the previous culture in which they grew up
and which continues to seem “normal” or “natural” to them, even if they are militarily
subjugated by a foreign power. It is only as generational replacement brings in new
generations who grow up, go to school, find work, marry, have children and pay taxes in a
c u l t u re that is increasingly Spanish or British dominated that a fundamental socialpsychological transformation gradually occurs.
Seen in the light of this historical background, the current strategy of Bush, Cheney and
Petraeus in Iraq now finally begins to make sense.
On the one hand, as we have seen, U.S. strategy during the last year fits neither a “classic
counterinsurgency” framework nor a “temporary cease-fire leading directly to stability”
21
perspective. It is therefore almost comforting to find that there is actually a very different
military strategy that is driving our current actions.
In fact, it is quite clear that the actual military strategy America has been following since last
spring has been a “hedge our bets” variant of the classic divide et impera – simultaneously
paying salaries to the Sunni resistance, declaring our support for the ISIR/Badr government
of Nori al Maliki and honoring a prolonged cease-fire with the Mahdi Army (even though
this last step gave them the chance to resupply, reequip and consolidate support in the
economically vital south).
These contradictory actions make absolutely no sense as normal counterinsurgency tactics
(which call instead for maintaining “unrelenting pressure” on the minority of insurgent”
bad actors”) nor as standard UN style peacekeeping (which would not endorse massively
subsidizing the arms purchases of probable future belligerents). But they make perfect sense
as elements of a spur of the moment divide et impera adopted under the pressure of events.
And in fact, in larger perspective, a neo-Caesarian divide et impera imperial strategy has
actually been the real, underlying “shadow strategy” that has guided the Bush
Administration’s actions in the Middle East since before 2001. The basic outlines of this
strategy were to (1) invade, occupy and pacify Iraq, (2) build an extensive and robust
infrastructure of military bases in the country and then (3) use those bases as the staging
areas for air strikes, commando-style raids, large airmobile operations and even full scale,
Brigade and Division-level armored ground attacks on targets in Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and
anywhere else in the region Administration policy might deem necessary.
There was nothing particularly secret about this strategy. That part of it which was not
published in think-tank monographs and magazine articles in the conservative journals
between 1996 and 2003 was gleefully blurted out over cappuccinos and canapés to solid
progressive journalists like Josh Marshall, John Judis and others who then dutifully reported
virtually all of its major elements to their readers. Many of the Neo-conservatives’ Powerpoint slides which showed the likely targets of future military actions could be overlaid
almost exactly over a map of Alexander the Great’s major military campaigns.
It was the general awareness of this Neo-Caesarian “shadow strategy” operating behind the
scenes that gave the press coverage of the Iraq invasion its weird, Kabuki Theater character.
Journalists were universally aware that the date for the invasion had been set the previous
fall, based on the predicted optimal temperature and weather conditions in southern Iraq
and Bagdad, and yet they earnestly reported “shocking” new discoveries that supposedly
provided the missing “smoking gun” that suddenly proved an invasion was necessary.
Leading Administration spokesmen and defenders confidently declared themselves totally
unfazed when their most basic predications turned out to be totally false (e.g. that we would
be greeted as “liberators” or that “secular” Iraqis would not sink into sectarian civil war) and
quickly began to be quoted as “the leading experts” once again. In fact, everybody knew
that their monumental errors in judgment were not really important because they were only
part of the superficial PR packaging of the invasion and not part of the fundamental longterm military strategy.
In the view of the neoconservatives and the administration, in fact, the Neo-Caesarian
shadow strategy has actually been a solid success. A substantial American military presence
22
in Iraq has become an international fait accompli and a massive network of 70 bases, 38
major supply depots, 18 fuel storage centers, 10 ammunition dumps. 1,900 tanks, and
armored vehicles, 700 aircraft and 43,000 trucks has been created.
The recent elevation of General Petraeus to head the Central Command for the Middle East
and Central Asia – replacing a general who was not sufficiently enthusiastic about using Iraqbased, American forces to threaten and if necessary attack Iran – is, in effect, the formal
recognition of this Neo-Caesarian divide et impera shadow strategy as the basis for the future
US military role in the Middle East.
There are a vast range of moral, political and diplomatic objections that can be raised against
this Neo-Caesarian strategy. For the moment, however, it is important to focus on its purely
military aspect.
There are three important lessons from previous wars of occupation and empire that suggest
that ultimately this strategy is likely to fail.
First, we have far too few troops to actually achieve either of the two major post-invasion
objectives that the original strategy was designed to achieve – to seriously win the “hearts
and minds” of the people in Iraq and to have available a large enough military force to
successfully launch a substantial military incursion into Iran.
The military force that would be necessary to accomplish these objectives goes far beyond
the military’s immediate problems of overextended troop rotations and maintaining proper
military reserve levels in other areas of the world. Fully achieving either one of the objectives
above would require something like a hundred thousand additional troops at the barest
minimum – and achieving both objectives would require hundreds of thousands,
particularly if – as it should be – the Powell Doctrine of requiring overwhelming and
disproportionate force would be followed rather than gambling on operations using barely
adequate or less than adequate forces.
Second, unlike previous empires, America is constrained by global media oversight and world
opinion from using extreme tactics of reprisal and massive retaliation that have often proven
brutally effective in the suppression of other guerrilla wars (In the post-war period French
tactics in Algeria became notorious for their systematic brutality, for example, while in
Central America death squads, mass executions and the destruction of entire villages were
endemic). The advocates of this approach (who tend to have nicknames like “blowtorch
Bob” or “piano-wire Bill”) grumble mightily about cowardly half-measures, but the regular
U.S. military itself is sufficiently aware of the catastrophic effect on Arab and Moslem
opinion of events like Abu Ghirab and indiscriminate civilian casualties to think that the
trade-off can today be worthwhile in purely military terms.
Third, without Americans taking a major direct role in running the country, we will not
significantly westernize Iraq’s culture. To significantly reduce culturally sanctioned
corruption, near-universal ethnic and religious sectarianism and tribal nepotism, pervasive
anti-American ideological indoctrination in the schools and systematic indifference to
23
western notions of legal rights and justice, the historical evidence indicates that a full-scale
colonial administration – covering the civil service, school systems and police and court
systems – would be required for an extended period of years. Otherwise the examples of
Lebanon and the occupied territories under the PLO suggest that even after one or more
decades there may be little cultural change.
Therefore, given the limited forces currently at our disposal and our unwillingness to use
extensive brutality or direct colonial administration, what we are left with is a strategy that
will end up looking very much like Julius Caesar’s continually improvised, “putting out one
fire after another ” approach in the conquest of Gaul – regularly dispatching troops from one
area to another to put down a city-wide rebellion in one place and then having to redeploy
them to battle resurgent guerrilla activity somewhere else. Equally, while we do have the
forces to make a temporary raid or launch an aerial bombing campaign against Iran , we do
not have enough to achieve the long-term occupation of any major Iranian city much less the
overthrow of the government as a whole. (Caesar actually conducted several brief harassing
raids into Germany during his Gallic campaigns but never attempted to make any major
incursions because he considered his forces far too meager)
Now there is no doubt that, if it wished to do so, The US is financially and demographically
able to decide upon a massive national mobilization – one that would bring back the draft,
deploy 750,000 troops in the Middle East, formally make a commitment to stay 30 or 40 years
and be willing to accept ongoing casualties for that entire time. This would be a militarily
realistic set of steps to propose in order to guarantee the achievement of the two objectives
above. But with our currently limited forces, it is not at all clear what the sacrifices American
troops are being asked to make are really going to achieve.
In the current election campaign, John McCain is offering extravagant promises of creating
a peaceful, happy Iraq with just our current level of forces. But he offers no plausible
explanation for how this can actually be achieved. Pro-military voters may admire McCain’s
values and character, but they also take military strategy seriously enough to recognize when
they are being given the run-around. The Democrats need to offer pro-military voters an
alternative military strategy – one that they can examine side by side with the Republican
strategy and decide for themselves simply makes more sense.
24
A Journal of Public Opinion & Political Strategy
T H E D E M O C R AT I C
strategıst
M I L I TA R Y
S T R AT E G Y F O R
D E M O C R AT S
M I L I TA RY S T R AT E G Y
w w w. t h e d e m o c r a t i c s t r a t e g i s t . o rg
FOR
D E M O C R AT S –
B y James Vega
PART I
Understanding the
“pro-military, but antiBush’s war” voters
PART II
Iraq is not a “classic
counterinsurgency”; it’s
a full-blown civil war
PA RT V – HOW THE DEMOCRATS CAN ARGUE WITH MCCAIN AND THE
REPUBLICANS ABOUT MILITA RY STRATEGY AND WIN
To summarize the argument thus far:
There is an important “pro-military, but anti-Bush’s war” voter group. Winning their
vote is critical for Democratic candidates at every level of the 2008 election.
To win the support of these voters Democrats need do three things
PART III
The surge isn’t
“working”, it’s just
“postponing” – and in
the long run
it’s making
things worse
PART IV
The Republicans do
have a military strategy
– it’s called
“Divide and Rule”,
it takes at least
50 years, requires
lots of casualties
and – the half-hearted
way we’re doing it –
almost never works
1. Democrats must demonstrate to these “pro-military” voters that they
sincerely honor and respect the value system of the American military.
2. Democrats must distinguish and clarify to these voters that they
completely support what most members of the armed forces see as their
basic mission – protecting America from another terrorist attack. They
must make clear that this is emphatically not the issue on which
Democrats and Republicans disagree.
3. Democrats must learn how to express their ideas in the language and
framework of military strategy – to win the debate with the
Republicans within the “strategic” conceptual framework in which
“pro-military” voters want policies regarding Iraq to be discussed.
In previous sections three basic ideas about America’s military strategy in Iraq have
PART V
How the Democrats
Can Argue with
McCain and the
Republicans about
Military Strategy
and Win
been presented.
1. That the conflict in Iraq is now a full-scale civil war, not an insurgency
2. That in many civil wars. short-term cease fires often just temporarily
postpone deeply-rooted religious and ethnic conflict – and even make
the ultimate violence even worse
3. That “staying the course” or “finishing the job” in Iraq implies not only
refereeing the bitter civil war for many years but also profoundly
changing the nation’s society and culture. These are objectives that will
require long years, more soldiers, constant casualties and that – without
using brutality, reprisals and direct US military rule – probably still will
not be achieved.
Many “pro-military, anti-Bush’s war ” voters have already reached some version of these
key conclusions by themselves, based on their own common sense and their daily observation of the news on TV. This is what underlies their view that (1) “the surge was a mistake”, (2) that Bush’s policies have “undermined America’s security” and (3) that we
should “reduce the number of troops”.
25
So how can Democrats present speak to these voters – offering them an approach expressed
in the language and conceptual framework of military strategy?
Most pro-military Americans will agree that there are three basic things any politician owes
to the American people – and even more to the men and women of the armed forces
themselves – before he or she proposes to send or keep American troops in combat.
1. A clearly defined mission and objectives
2. Sufficient resources to do the job
3. An explicit exit strategy
Most Americans, whether pro-military or not, will agree that if a politician cannot or will
not provide these three things, he or she simply does not deserve the support of the
American people.
Let’s look at each of these in turn:
1. A clearly defined mission and objectives
John McCain defines the mission and objectives he proposes to achieve in Iraq as follows:
“…The establishment of a peaceful, stable, prosperous democratic state that poses no threat
to its neighbors and contributes to the defeat of terrorists”.
Fredrick Kagan, a leading architect of the surge, offers an only slightly less utopian formulation of the same vision:
“…a stable, representative state that controls its own territory, is oriented toward the West
and is an ally in the struggle against militant Islamism”
In either case, however, the basic mission is awe-inspiringly ambitious and at the same time
very vaguely defined.
The Democrats, in contrast, can propose a very clearly defined and focused set of missions
for US forces in Iraq – one that follows directly from the fundamental mission of all US forces
since 9/11 – to protect America from another terrorist attack.
Specifically, there are three key missions for US air and ground forces in Iraq
(1) Applying overwhelming destructive force against any active anti-US terrorist training
camps, headquarters, staging areas and other sites in the region.
(2) Occupying, neutralizing or destroying any nuclear weapons or other WMD facilities in the
region that fall into terrorist hands or otherwise present a clear and present danger.
(3) Deterring any conventional armor/infantry attack on Iraq that might be launched by Iran
or any other nation in the region.
Along with these key missions, US forces in Iraq should also perform a variety of non-combat
missions (such as providing support and training for Iraq armed forces, conducting
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intelligence gathering operations, disrupting terrorist infrastru c t u re, organizing and
recruitment and providing protection for US forces and installations).
On the other hand, Democrats can and should specifically reject any of the following missions
for US forces:
1. Supporting one side or another in Iraq’s ethnic and religious civil wars
2. Westernizing Iraq’s society and culture
3. Protecting privileged or low cost US access to Iraq’s oil
4. Remaking the societies of the Middle East
5. Maintaining and garrisoning enough troops in Iraq to be able to successfully
invade and occupy Iran and/or Syria
This two-part formulation of the appropriate mission for US forces is essentially consistent
with the positions of the two Democratic candidates. It differs by expressing the ideas in
terms of the mission or missions that we are asking the men and women of our armed forces
to perform rather than the exact number of months withdrawal should be allowed to take
or the exact number of residual forces that should remain. For anti-war Democrats, of course,
these latter numbers have now become fundamental litmus tests of the sincerity of
candidates’ promises. But it is worth emphasizing that they became so only because the Bush
administration kept continually changing their definition of the mission that America was
trying to accomplish.
For pro-military voters, this strategic, “mission-oriented” way of talking about this subject is
far more persuasive then debates over seemingly arbitrary deadlines or troop numbers
because they see the fundamental question as follows:
“What is the mission that you are asking our brave sons and daughters to risk their lives for,
to fight for and possibly to die for? You owe it to the men and women of the armed forces
as well as to their husbands, wives, parents and family to give Americans straight, honest and
concrete answers.”
Democrats will have no difficulty on this score. Most fully support an absolutely firm and
decisive military response to any threat of actual terrorism like 9/11. But they do not support
putting our soldiers in harms’ way to achieve the five other goals noted above.
Republicans, on the other hand – and particularly the neo-conservative strategists behind the
Republican strategy in Iraq for the last five years – will find this way of framing the issue
extremely inconvenient. The essence of their political strategy has consistently been to
describe the mission they propose as “defending America from terrorism” while in fact
actually trying to use the men and women of our armed forces to achieve one or more of the
five other goals listed above. Being asked to explicitly avow or disavow these additional
missions will place them on what General Sherman once famously called “the horns of
a dilemma”.
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2. Sufficient re s o u rces to do the job
The resources that are needed to carry out any military mission are determined by the nature
of the mission itself. John McCain’s vaultingly ambitious mission requires a correspondingly
vast allocation of resources. To remake Iraq as a peaceful, stable, prosperous democratic state
will require vastly more troops, funding, resources then are currently allocated or available.
Even now US troops in Iraq are stretched thin, serving excessively long tours of duty and
leaving many other vital security interests of the United States unmet. Newspaper articles
regularly report the growing shortfalls and degradation of the nation’s military equipment
and supplies. A fully honest discussion of the resources McCain’s mission will require would
involve giving serious and honest consideration to reinstating the draft and approving
significant new taxes. In the absence of this kind of honest discussion, the only option is a
consistently underfunded and undersupported mission that cannot achieve its objectives.
The Democratic mission, in contrast, – even re t u rning to Powell doctrine of insisting upon
using overwhelming and dispro p o rtionate force – would still re q u i re much less than the
c u rrent troop levels – by some calculations, perhaps only one-third – and would there f o re
reduce the stress on the armed forces and allow a re t u rn to normal troop rotations, the
reestablishment of proper strategic re s e rves in other areas of the world and still also allow
significant forces to be redeployed to Afghanistan where there is a better case for
their utility.
3. An explicit exit strategy
The mission John McCain proposes is explicitly designed to not have a clear exit strategy – we
must remain until a massive transformation of Iraqi culture and society is achieved. It is a war
that can and will require generations to complete.
The Democratic mission, in contrast, implies a steady redeployment of our troops away from
patrol and guard duty in dangerous, contested areas and to more easily defensible positions
in bases detached from highly populated areas. The issue is not exactly how long this
redeployment should be planned to take, but it that it is established as a clear and explicit
military objective.
Conclusion
Many Americans will not support the Democratic position. Some will genuinely believe that
American men and women should indeed fight and die to achieve the neo-conservative
missions noted above. Others will assume that, even if the Democratic position appears to
make more sense, Republicans are still better suited to make decisions about military mission
and strategy. Some will simply support the slogans of “victory” and “finishing the job”
without questioning their meaning.
But based on the opinion data, these people could easily be a minority by next November. A
substantial group of Democratic voters are firmly anti-war and will vote for any Democrat on
that basis. Another group may disagree on Iraq but choose to vote for Democrats on the basis
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of other issues.
But for a critical swing group of “pro-military, anti-bush” voters the approach outlined in
these pages may play a significant role in convincing them that – although they have long
distrusted Democrats on military matters – simply as matter of military common sense, the
Democratic strategy for Iraq is better than John McCain’s. The Democratic approach is supported by many people within the military, it is endorsed by many major military thinkers and
it also corresponds with the common sense conclusions of most ordinary Americans. It is simply a better military strategy.
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